How to avoid being falsely accused of harassment by a student?

Question

I am a junior faculty member and as part of my work I have to supervise students. I am required by the University to have one-on-one meetings with them every week to check their progress and give feedback. I usually have these meetings in my office like all the other staff.

One piece of advice I have received from senior colleagues and online fora is to always keep my door open during the meetings to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct (in particular harassment). This could happen for instance with a student trying to hurt me or the university for failing a course.

I understand that the probability of this happening (being falsely accused by a student) is very small. Yet, the advice of keeping the door open during meetings is standard in academia, which means a probability must exist (albeit very small) - or, the universities think so.

Question: Is there any other advice, common practice, or university policies for precautions to be taken - along the lines mentioned above (open door) - to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct by a student (with the focus on false harassment accusations) during private meetings?

I reject in advance any answers that might discriminate or bias against any group of students based on their gender, origin, or background history. Also, I would prefer to avoid solutions that include audio-visual recording, as this is not usual in my university.

For context, I am a male professor having meetings with students of all sexes. My main concern though are meetings with female students (due to past experience of a friend being falsely accused by one of his female students, with severe effects to his professional and personal life).

Note: My original question was misinterpreted leading to debates concerning what I actually asked. You can retrieve the original question in the edit history for context on some of the answers.

Answer 1

I am not sure if my experiences are common, but as a faculty member in a psychology department I have had a number of unique and uncomfortable experiences with female students. I have described the two most egregious cases here and here. As for an answer, I want to start with an excerpt from this answer since I think it is so good

1) Never sexually harass your students. Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two stops on the side of that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)

In addition, it is important to think about your behavior. I advise always keeping your door open, and remaining on opposite sides of the desk/table when appropriate. You need to be mindful of physical contact with students (cf. What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student?) and what you say to them.

Apart from actually not harassing your students, I advise you to document any awkward interactions you have with students. If you accidently (remember rule 1) inappropriately interact with a student (e.g., physical contact or an odd turn of phrase), regardless of if was you or the student that did/said it, you need to tell someone. Similarly, if a student gets unusually upset about a grade, or anything else, you want to document it. I suggest email so there is a written record. I always told my department chair, but the director of teaching or a faculty mentor could also work. I would advise always telling the same person, so they have some context.

In cases where you know the situation could be difficult or where students have been difficult in the past, you my want to have another faculty member join your meeting. You obviously cannot do this for all meetings (e.g., having a faculty member sit in on all your office hours would not work), it would be fine scheduled meetings with problematic students and difficult situations (e.g., failing a student or academic misconduct).

It is also worth noting that sometimes students want privacy (maybe you are discussing grades or a medical condition). If a student wants to shut my door for privacy, I am fine with it, barring a past history or an obvious difficult situation. If anything uncomfortable happens after the door was shut, or if you are feeling the slightest bit concerned/paranoid, you should document what happened.

Dear Department Chair,

I met today with Jane Doe to discuss her medical condition. She requested and shut my door while meeting. At one point she briefly came around my desk and showed me the rash on her arm. It was a little odd and in the future I will make sure students know to respect our personal space. I don't foresee any issues, but wanted to keep you in the loop.

Answer 2

Frankly, it is not clear to me why you are so concerned about being falsely accused of sexual harassment. Yes, there is a chance of this happening, but the chance is very small, even compared to other equally or more grave things that are largely out of your control (serious health problems, accidents, and so forth).

Lately, maybe because of the news, I am afraid that if I displease one of the students (for example fail her) she might accuse me of harassment to hurt me or force the University into a deal.

How often does a student fabricate a sexual harassment claim against a faculty member who has behaved entirely professionally? Such a student has a lot to lose as well.

No matter how it ends up, it will have serious consequences on my life (personal and professional).

I don't really agree. Such allegations are treated confidentially at first, and if they are totally without merit they need not go public. I speak here from direct experience with the process for dealing with harassment allegations at my university. I have reported (as required) secondhand information about possible harassment by faculty members at my university, and these investigations were indeed kept confidential and the faculty members remain in good standing at the university.

It happened to a colleague (different university) and it practically destroyed his career and marriage; even though he was finally cleared.

I'm sorry to hear that; maybe that's what's setting you off. I don't know your colleague's situation at all, so I can't speak to it. I do however respectfully disagree with your claim that any false claim of harassment by a student will come close to destroying one's personal life. There are many public examples of marriages that survived sexual harassment. Moreover, there are people in my life whom I would not believe guilty of sexual misconduct based on any amount of circumstantial evidence. I think a lot of people feel this way about their spouses.

I thought of rejecting any female students (you can select the students to accept), but I could never discriminate like that. I thought of hiding a camera in my office, but that could go badly if it's detected (and it's illegal). Asking only the female students to meet me at the library or public space would seem very odd and discriminating. Asking all students to do the same would be difficult to me.

I agree that with the possible exception of the last, these are terrible ideas. (Really, you thought of putting a hidden camera in your office to protect yourself from claims of sexual harassment?) The last idea is not inherently bad, but...how is it different to have students meet in a library than to meet in your office with the door kept open?

How do you protect yourself from this? How can I not discriminate, be a good educator, but protect myself and my family? Am I being paranoid (probably)? I am uncomfortable asking senior academics in my department about this.

"Paranoid" is a little strong, but I don't really understand where your worries are coming from. Nor do I understand why you are reluctant to talk to your colleagues about this. You seem to be slightly "hung up" on something here.

Anyway, here is my strategy for avoiding allegations of sexual harassment. The first two points are key, and the third is optional but helpful. Here we go:

1) Never sexually harass your students. Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two steps away from that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)

2) Make sure that your interaction with students looks to all observers like you are a steadfast subscriber to point 1) above. So, yes: keep your office door open whenever students are in your office. Feel free to make a point that you are doing so. Make a point of not talking about romantic relationships with your students -- either theirs or yours -- except possibly in ways that are so passing and innocent that they actually reinforce that you know where the boundaries lie.

3) Actually be ahead of the male-academic curve when it comes to knowledge and sensitivity about such issues.

In your case, I caught a few minor things that suggest that you have some room for improvement on the latter point.

• Most of all, being fearful of being falsely accused of sexual harassment suggests a certain lack of empathy with your female students. I am aware that pointing that out is not directly helpful, but I do hope you can attain a better state in the fullness of time.

• For every female student who falsely accuses their male faculty member of sexual harassment, how many female students are truly sexually harassed, or borderline sexually harassed, or not harassed but treated differently from the male students in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable? In my experience, if you include all of the above the ratio is something like 1:100 or more. If you can come off as legitimately sympathetic to these issues, then (apart from other benefits!) you make yourself a much less appealing target for students to make up stories. And having other students step in and say "On the contrary, Professor A is one of the good ones..." will certainly help to defuse things if it comes to that.

• "Some of the students are girls." Do you mean that they are under 18? If you do mean that, say that. It is no longer considered appropriate to refer to adult women as "girls." Probably you would not refer to your male students as "boys," and by the way, you shouldn't.

• "I understand that the same accusation could come from a male student. My 80s small town bias doesn't allow me to consider that possibility." What the what?!? First of all your statement is literally contradictory: you are evidently considering the possibility. Second of all: what are you trying to say -- that you're more backward / less progressive than other people in your position might be? You are giving an excuse that excuses nothing and that could be quite off-putting to many other academics. So don't say things like that.

Added: Here are some statistics on the prevalence of sexual harassment in American universities. I can't find statistics on prevalence of false accusations of sexual harassment against American faculty members (and doubt such exist), but in my best judgment it somewhere between two and three orders of magnitude more likely that a female student gets sexually harassed by someone in the university than makes up a claim of being sexually harassed by a faculty member. Several people have suggested that such statistics are not relevant to the OP. I respectfully disagree: as others have said, a rational approach to this problem is to quantify the risk and ask what tradeoffs the OP is willing to incur to lessen it. Knowing that female students and faculty routinely occur a risk hundreds of times greater is something to take into account when making these considerations.

Answer 3

While it is nice that the other people show consideration for all women who are harassed, they do not seem to fully appreciate the position of the many men who are falsely accused. Someone in another answer claims the ratio is 1:100, there is no statistics for that in academia, but in the field I am aware of (family law) the percent of women fabricating accusations against their husbands is around 50%.

While the OP might be seen as paranoid, people who think that do not understand how devastating is to be falsely accused (or to know someone who has been falsely accused), and this is much more common than people often assume. In many cases men are assumed guilty until proven innocent.

I am not saying this to scare the OP, on the contrary, I think it is important that he feels people understand he is not paranoid. However, we also need to be realistic, and while, as I said, it is true that men who have been falsely accused have felt devastating consequences, it is also very unlikely for this to happen in your situation.

The best analogy I can make is this: think of air travel. If your plane crashes, your chances of survival are almost zero, and if you know someone who died in a plane accident, you might be afraid of flying. Understandable, and everyone should be understanding and sympathetic of how you feel, you are not paranoid if you are afraid of flying. However, flying is also quite safe, in the sense that driving is actually more dangerous, and so are many other activities.

Be aware of the dangers, but don't stop flying, you cannot take the train from New York to London. In your job, you need to understand you need to be relaxed, and feel comfortable with both men and women. Do keep that door open, the same way you will fasten your seat belt, and understand that the probability of being falsely accused is quite low.

Answer 4

If you read the news lately more closely, you will see that almost no one believed the past individual accounts of harassment, and it took about a dozen simultaneous accusations for anyone to even begin to take it seriously. So even if it comes to that, the scale is still utterly weighed in your favor. The best thing you could do, IMO, is educate yourself more about how sexual harassment plays out. Try to put yourself in the place of your female students, rather than reflexively identifying with harassers just because you share a gender with them.

Right now, you are treating your female students like some bomb that might go off at any moment. That is no way to be an advisor. Knowing the patterns will let you both:

• rest more easily in the knowledge of where the boundaries are, and that you are not crossing them
• recognize when others are crossing them, and not make excuses for those of your colleagues that actually do harass their students.

The boundaries are not even all that gender-specific. For instance, do not talk about sexual or romantic feelings in the office. Since you are heterosexual (I assume from your post), this would likely take very different forms for male and female students, but it is equally inappropriate to bond with your male students by talking about who you find attractive than it is to expound on your marital problems with your female students. Watch yourself in moderation in both situations, rather than walking on eggshells around only half your students.

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Edit: based on the comments, let me expand this answer some more. The reality is, one sufficiently motivated person of any gender can make your life hell. This is simply a fact of life, and it is ultimately impossible to guard against every avenue of attack. Any student with a grievance might just as well file a report that you have falsified data. (In fact, my institution has recently revised their grievance procedures following a report of research misconduct that was deemed frivolous after investigation. I am sure the professor in this case also suffered. You can find news articles if you are so inclined.)

Focusing on the one variant that is more likely to come from female students has disparate effects on some of your students. This is discrimination. Since you note in your question that you would prefer not to opt to discriminate against female students just to assuage your fears (a commendable position that I wish more people would take), but it is impossible to find some way to hush up any accusation immediately (for obvious reasons this is also undesirable), the way to deal with this is to become more comfortable with the situation. Just like women learn to live their lives with the constant threat of being sexually harassed, and somehow still manage to interact with men normally, you can learn to live with the possibility of being accused of harassment.

How do you do this?

• Step one, and this is why "don't harass anyone" keeps showing up in the answers, is to make sure your behavior is above reproach. If you are afraid someone will think your house is too dirty, put some extra effort into cleaning, for your own peace of mind. (This can also include always treating your students fairly in matters of grading etc. It is harder to make up an accusation against someone you respect than against someone you hate.)

• Step two, make sure your standards are in line with everyone else's. Read a forum where people talk about housekeeping, and learn how many days in a row it is normal to use a towel before putting it in the wash.

• Step three, get involved in the process. I'm giving up on the analogy now: read up on past accusations, join the equal opportunities commission, or volunteer to assist in an investigation, etc. Learn more about what happens after an accusation, which types of evidence are used, what the standards of proof are, etc. Get familiar with how your institution deals with grievances. This will let you have strategies in place for how to deal with an accusation if it does happen, and return some feeling of control of the situation to you, rather than just being afraid that your life will be over at that point.

Answer 5

Perhaps think of this the same way you think of avoiding being run over as a pedestrian.

There are obvious precautions you should definitely take, such as looking both ways before crossing a road, and keeping your interactions with your students strictly professional, no touching, no dating students, no sex-related remarks.

There are a series of further pedestrian precautions you can take, such as only crossing at light controlled intersections, not walking at times when drunk drivers are especially likely, working up to never walking outside your home or buildings at all. Each further reduces the risk at an increasing convenience cost.

Similarly, there are a series of further accusation-preventing precautions you can take, discussed in other answers. The equivalent of never walking outside buildings is to not take any job that requires one-on-one meetings with students some of whom will be women.

Life is a constant series of trade-offs between risk and reward, in which you have to decide how much risk you are prepared to take to get things you want in life. If you want a job that involves meeting one-on-one with students, and want the convenience of using your own office rather than going to a busy public location, there is going to be a non-zero risk.

Answer 6

The OPs clarification:

Assume there is a person that might want to hurt their educator for failing them by spreading lies or accusing them of something they didn't do (harassment during 1-1 meetings). How can that educator protect themselves (best practices, measures, etc.)?

changes the question somewhat. It's not about the one student in X (whatever X is) who is willing to risk mutual destruction to satisfy a grievance. In this case, I agree with StrongBad regarding general precautions. I would also be selective in which students to accept. There is nothing bad about it if done on an individual basis (instead of based on the sex of the person). After all, you need to work with the student and if the interaction does not work out, it's unlikely you'll both get something good out of it.

But your clarification sounds like there is a student out to get you. In that case, it might be helpful to talk with trusted colleagues who also know the student (about your difficulties with the student). It might even be time for legal support — someone who knows academia and knows how to deal with these cases. Also, "always be recording" might be helpful here (again: talk to a lawyer first).

In general I have found that conflicts with students (e.g. about grades) can be mediated if done correctly (needs a neutral and skilled mediator). However, this might not work for all students.

One issue I haven't found in the answers so far is a worst-case scenario plan for the unlikely but possible case of a false accusation happening. I find that with rare but devastating events, having a plan on how to deal with such a situation might help. You are unlikely to think clearly if that event occurs.

A website I have seen long ago (page no longer exists) listed a few tips in case of a wrongful accusation (albeit directed at students). Among others:

• not to talk with others about it (save close family or attorney; never ever talk about it on social media; you never know how it might be used against you),
• keeping your cool (influences perception)
• seeking independent counsel (the university might decide to protect its reputation)
• not use the university eMail/phone system (again: the university might not be neutral)
• be wary of pretext calls (friend calling you and trying to get you to admit guilt; just decline to answer any questions and hang up)
• be wary of physical danger (person who accuses you might instigate violence)
• never talk to the police if accused (let the attorney deal with it)
• getting to know the procedures on how the university deals with it (esp. to know your rights)
• recording anything that you are legally allowed to record (state laws! consult attorney)
• document-document-document — and keep everything organized
• adhere religiously to no-contact orders (even if the students wants you to call back or wants to meet)
• and the like.

Hopefully you never need it, but a worst-case plan might be helpful.

Talking about helpful, a comment about the question and some of the reactions here:

I think a false accusation is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. It can destroy a person's life, can socially isolate them, can drive them to suicide, and can undermine the basic trust in the legal system.

And yep, sexual misconduct/harassment/assault happens. A few people — male and female — are criminal assholes, no question about it, esp. in positions of power. But there also are a few people — male and female — who will use any method to get at someone. There is a phase in conflicts where even devastating personal losses are accepted just to get at the other person. It's not rational but deeply human. And in some cases, this can involve wrongful accusations.

Which sucks, given that most people in academia just want to do a good job — do good research and teach good courses — and these things make life unnecessarily difficult.

With this in mind, I wonder how some answers would read if you gender swap it (useful test to see biases). If the question had been about a female professor being afraid of possible physical violence from male students. After all, a wrongful accusation is essentially assaulting a person via a proxy, and over a longer time period. Here the proxy is the legal system, and sometimes also the court of public opinion (which sometimes comes with actual violence, not to mention violence in prisons).

In this swapped case, essentially saying: it's rare, bad things do not happen to good people, don't invite it, just be professional, and what's really important are cases of Y ... just does not cut it. It would probably be called "victim blaming" and "derailment". Yes, being professional is good advice, but it doesn't work if the student is not. Humans aren't always professional, or even rational.

So, with the question asked here I think it's best to ... well, assume the best: the OP just wants to do a good job and cases of false accusations just scare the shit out of many people. No matter how rare they are. And as useful as statistics are (which would have to be about false accusations), a person has only one life and the consequences are devastating. Even if the probability is low, if the consequences are serious enough it pays to prepare for such an event. That's why we have insurances.

So, kudos to the OP for asking the question and dealing with the reactions.

Answer 7

I will answer only one question out of many; for the other questions, see other answers.

"Am I being paranoid (probably)?"

No.

Some female student might wish to take revenge for having failed in an exam, especially if her failure in the exam led to a major failure in her whole life planning. Now, your responsibility for this failure might be even justified, since absolute perfection in grading every single student is impossible. You might have erred somewhere. So, the female student might wish to incur as much harm to you as possible. The ways she might incur harm to you are endless, starting with love letters such that your spouse sees them, adding Viagra to the beans in the open-kitchen coffee machine before a meeting with you and accusing you of harrasment, or actually taking a gun to the campus and shooting you! (It is a rare situation, but it did happen on my memory: life is much richer than we think.)

As you see, you cannot protect yourself against all that; it's probably not worth even trying to. If you are really concerned, contact the legal department of your insitution and get a legal advice. And continue with the open-door policy during meetings with women. (You may also keep the doors open while having meetings with male students - not because of potential accusations, but because you might be afraid of physical violence.) And, if you have not learnt it so far, "don't steal rolls", which should go without saying. All that is easy to do, simplifies your life, and complicates the life of those trying to harm you.

Now, returning to whether you are being paranoid: no, since you don't blame women per se. You are afraid, perhaps phobic, but not paranoid.

Answer 8

A teacher I know defends himself so, that he never talks with female students without external observers.

He prefers talking them where also other people are present. If the student comes into his room, then he opens the door, so others can see (and, later, testify) what is or is not happened.

Answer 9

I am afraid that if I displease one of the students (for example, fail her) she might accuse me of harassment ...

If there is no actual cause for such a claimed harassment from your side, such an accusation can always happen quite independent of any actions you can take. Inventing a cause is probably not such a big obstacle for someone determined to accuse you falsely of sexual harassment. For example the accuser could state that the harassment happened outside of office hours when you met in private.

Therefore I conclude that this is a general risk of a teaching/research career and quite unavoidable.

You could minimize it by not giving bad marks, not letting anyone fail, avoiding to teach female students or going full surveillance, but all these strategies have their own severe drawbacks prohibiting their use while ultimately not eliminating the risk that someone still might accuse you of harassment no matter what.

You can just hope you never, ever get into such a situation. Whether it's true or false, it's really bad for all affected persons. I know that in general the burden is on the accuser to prove the harassment, which should be difficult even with office hours and one-to-one meetings, but the social implications often do not wait for the legal processing of the case.

It probably applies to anyone of any profession and may be more likely the more people are dependent on you.

Answer 10

If you really want to nip false allegations in the bud, put a camera in plain sight. Announce at the start of each meeting that you are recording the meeting to prevent any potential issues from arising (you can even be candid about your fears here).

Record all of the meetings, not just those that are worrisome to you. Archive them for as long as you are worried. A low resolution webcam won't come close to filling a $100 hard drive anytime in the next 10 years.

Be sure to label the files well in case your fears manifest themselves and you need to show the meeting to your administration.

Answer 11

Law enforcement usually cannot press charges unless there is preponderance of evidence such as injury, witness(es) testimony(s), past crimes such as the accused being a registered sexual offender, or evidence that the victim showed that they were in some real danger. If they were a minor, then the rules may change, depending on your local laws, but normally there's more leniency for those who want to press charges when there's a minor involved because not even an attorney is required to press charges according to this Florida Statute 784.

There are some fallacies in your assumptions, most of which already pointed out.

Always document your interaction with your fellow students, such as the amount of time spent with a student. Whether it's a handwritten or typed log documenting the amount of time you spent with a student for the day. Phone call logs or even your Internet history states what you did at what time to counter-argue against someone who may think of accusing you.

Do you have an office? Tutor in an area with the door open and visible glass. Is there a camera nearby it? All the better for you. Take advantage of your office space. That's why it's built that way: to help prevent civil liabilities against school employees such as yourself.

Of course, since you work in a public institution, I assume, that means whatever evidence supports you may be used against you if the accused wants any evidence. But with what I stated about being open to all of your students by tutoring in an open area in front of others whether they are passing by or waiting in line, then there may be witnesses who support you no matter what.

I'm sure you were presented with a type of teacher-student agreement or contract when you were hired. It is an agreement that you will not engage or seek personal relationships with your pupils and you will be held to that standard. I, for example, cannot engage in a personal relationship with my clients and if I was discovered just meeting them outside the workplace for a drink at the pub and it was proven that we met at my job, then I could definitely be terminated or worse, charged with a crime, depending, of course. So, no matter how you tell it: if they give you their phone number, e-mail, whatever and then can prove they did so and you accepted it, then that's it.

Don't assume the worst, but always be secure. Good luck to you.

Answer 12

Maybe handle it like many male doctors do when performing gynecologic examinations: Always keep another person in the room. You could handle this by simply not isolating yourselves in your office, but rather meet somewhere open? It might be kind of an extreme, but..

Answer 13

If there is an actual chance that you would fail a student, then seek out resources to help the student academically. That's the right thing to do, and it's the right think to focus on, rather than fantasies of how the student might want to take revenge.

Your concern seems irrational. Statistically, which is more common?

A. A student is sexually harassed and reports it, yet the university does nothing to address the problem.

B. A student falsely accuses an instructor of sexual harassment.

If you're not sure, then I recommend you do some reading on recent activism around Title IX.

If you spend a significant amount of time worrying about this, then you may want to check whether you have any additional intrusive thoughts beyond this one. If so, you might benefit from a treatment called Exposure and Response Prevention. Ideally you would be able to stand back and notice yourself having an irrational, perhaps outrageous thought, and just watch it go by, as you might watch an interesting cloud float by overhead.

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Here are some specific observations to back up my conjecture that you might be spending "a significant amount of time worrying about this":

• You wrote, "Am I being paranoid (probably)?"

• Several participants quoted and addressed this question in their answers, and you did not remove this line from the original question, and you did not jump in below their answers to try to convince them they had misunderstood you.

• A participant wrote, "You are afraid, perhaps phobic, but not paranoid." This suggests that I'm not the only one who wondered as I did.

• You wrote, "I will try to lighten up; I am a stressful person by nature."

• Your title and focus were "How to avoid being accused of harassment by a student," not "How to avoid giving the appearance of harassment," or "How to avoid making a sensitive student uncomfortable."

I wondered if you were making yourself just a bit miserable about this. All over this page, you basically say, "Well, yes, ... hmm, no...." Look, IF there is an element of phobia here, the only person suffering from it is you. You get to decide whether this is limiting your enjoyment of life or not, and if so, whether you want to do anything about it. If I were in the set of people close to you, and I confronted you with my conjecture, that could make things uncomfortable for you. But the beauty of the internet is that you are free to consider my conjecture, or not; you are free to consider it, and reject it; you are free to accept it, and then put your head in the sand and leave things the way they are.

There are two aspects to my answer. One is motivated by a sincere interest in sharing information about what you could do about it if you conclude that your worry has wandered outside of the realm of healthy fear.

The other is indeed about gender issues.

There are students who have been traumatized by previous experiences, and there are professors who spend a reasonable amount of energy avoiding causing discomfort to such students. I wonder, would such considerations make you less reluctant to hold some of your office hours in a public place, such as the library, as you were considering doing?